In the moral universe of the Bible, God is not an *******, rather he is punishing the wicked, which is just. Also God is the Almighty and you are a puny human with no standing or status to make such a judgment. If the Bible is 100% true, you have to change lots of value judgments.

I just don't think newborns can be wicked and deserving of punishment, under any circumstances or value system. And I would be willing to suffer an eternity in hell for that belief.
At least it would be an eternity of knowing I was right.

Under the assumptions of the conversation, this is plainly delusional. And this would also make your presentation consistent with the notion that people who don't believe in God do so because they are in active rebellion.

I think the "blah blah moral realism" part is doing a lot of work there. I can understand why chillrob has trouble accepting that "the bible being 100% true" invalidates his moral intuitions also. Maybe he doesn't view morality in that way.

But, in any case, you can understand his response as just being a rejection of the idea that the premise is even possible.

I agree. But I think Original Position's second post makes it absolutely clear what the assumptions of the conversation are.

Possibly. But that would be more of a failure to address the hypothetical than anything else.

And in this sense, it could be a potential rejection of reality. The inability to believe that something is true (or false) has no bearing on the actual truth (or falsity) of the statement. Even if that something is presented as merely hypothetical.

Where in the bible does it say that god is 100% moral? I don't remember anything like that. It seems to me that it basically says killing is bad, and that god is a killer. My simple logic then tells me that god is bad.

There are passages that imply God's moral character, such as in Isaiah's vision in Isaiah 6. Holiness is the concept of the transcendence of God, which includes things such as moral character.

Simple logic is often insufficient to understand complex situations. For example, it's difficult to conclude that the Bible says that killing of all forms is "bad." In particular, such an assumption would imply that Jesus' death was a "bad" thing.

Well of course I was deliberately simplifying things for emphasis, but I think that you are inferring way too much, or at least interpretation goes well beyond what I was talking about. Of course I know that religious scholars have made the interpretation that god is good by definition, but I don't remember anything said that simply in the bible, so to me that wouldn't be a given even if I assumed that the bible was 100% accurate in its historical records of events.

I also do believe that Jesus's death was a bad thing, even if I accept the rest of the bible. Surely god could have allowed salvation to happen without the death of Jesus. IMO the crucifixion happened is another example of god's gratuitous love of violence and gore.

I just don't see how this god is popular. Even if I wanted to believe in god, I would choose a far different one to believe in.

You're welcome to believe whatever you want to believe. But under the assumptions of the conversation, this is plainly delusional.

Meh? It seems to me like you're trying a little too hard to find a reason to be critical here.

I mean, I think I'm capable of exploring the intellectual consequences of making assumptions about the truth of various biblical propositions, although I'm not really convinced that the hypothetical "the bible is 100% true" is completely coherent. There bible is a collection of texts which don't all even agree with each other absent fairly contrived attempts at harmonization. But leaving that aside, I can work with it as a hypothetical, more or less, in some abstract way.

On the other hand, I'm not at all sure I'm really capable of adapting my view of the world to such a hypothetical, of really accepting it and changing accordingly. For moral reasons as well as purely intellectual reasons. I don't feel like this is much of a failure on my part, if it is one at all. And I would have said the same thing a couple years ago when I was a more actively practicing Christian. Having difficulty grappling with the consequences of believing a claim which is almost certainly false doesn't strike me as a problem with facing reality, even "potentially". Especially for claims which are so staggering in their implications to one's understanding of the world.

I thought I was the one who had set the assumptions of the conversation.

Yes, you did.

So what part exactly did you think was delusional?

The bolded is a fair criticism. I think I'm charitably taking that statement to mean that something akin to theological statements generally accepted as true within Christianity are all true. This would include things about the nature of God, which are the only ones relevant to the discussion at hand.

I don't know. I may get things wrong because of lack of experience with various types of assumptions, but that's a different matter. I don't consider that a lack of capability, but just an indication that I have not thought about it in that way enough to have intuition and understanding.

There's a difference between having difficulty grappling with consequences and just throwing up your hands and blowing the whole thing off. There are exceptions, such as if there's an inherent contradiction or inherent incoherence. But neither of these fit into the framework provided nor is part of the objection being raised.

Chillrob's position is "I disagree with this. And even if it were true, I would continue to disagree with it." Accepting that a claim is true but actively denying it is simply delusional.

Accepting a statement to be true (even as a hypothetical) but then actively denying it anyway.

Well this is where the misunderstanding came from then. I was not meaning anything about overall Christian theology, but only about what I could get from the Bible itself. As if I had never heard of Christianity but God suddenly appeared to me, dropped a Bible in front of me and said "this is true".

So... you're saying if you were left on your own with the Bible AND the Bible were true, you'd still reject it in some way? I don't quite understand what you mean. Or maybe I still agree with my assessment that this is delusional.

Edit: It might help to be very specific about the claims you're considering. Because of the vagueness of the situation described, it's hard for me to know what you're referring to.

There is a distinction between a murder and a kill. Murdering is bad, kills can definitely be good.

It's a very common element of legal systems to include stipulations where kills are proscribed.

I would accept the truth of the bible but reject giving my allegiance to its god, because the god as described by the bible is immoral, IMO.

Yes, but I know of no legal systems where genocide or the mass slaying of babies is acceptable, and these are either done or recommended by the god of the bible.

What truths are you accepting?

I seriously don't get what is so hard to understand about my theoretical, I think you guys are making this way too difficult.

If I somehow believed that everything stated about god in the bible was true, I would hate that god.

I.e. The god who tested Abraham by telling him to kill his son. The god who tortured Job and killed his family just to prove a point to Satan. The god who punished the Egyptian pharoah by killing lots of babies. The god who ordered genocides of non-believers.

For more terrible things, see:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=21


https://www.alternet.org/12-craziest...-old-testament

It is possible I missed a passage in which it was stated that god is all good and therefore all that is moral by definition. If so, I would have to change my conjecture to "if I believed all of the bible except that one part were true".

But my general point, and reason for the conjecture, is that the Christian god just isn't very appealing. And sure, almost all of the bad stuff is in the Old Testament, but Christians don't throw out the OT; if they did I would have much more respect for them.

Meh, he got the job done. The Israelites were finally freed from slavery on that last miracle - first borns of Egypt being offed.

As for the genocide, the Canaanites were merely prohibited from inhabiting a certain territory, with the failure to comply resulting in death.

- then he told Abraham not to kill his son. The son wasn't killed.

- Job's family wasn't all that great and he got a new one and had more wealth than prior to the ordeal

- Meh, perhaps there's reincarnation. Israelites were released, good result.


Christians definitely threw out the OT, the law isn't being instituted in any country in the world that I'm aware of.

I mean if they got rid of the OT completely, instead of keeping it as part of their basic sacred text.